Spot the Difference. Tak Bùi. Toronto, ON: Tundra Books, 2012. 48 pp., trade pbk., $11.99. ISBN 978-1-77049-279-0. Subject Heading: Picture puzzles-Juvenile literature. Grades 2 and up / Ages 7 and up. Review by Dave Jenkinson. *** /4

For those children who have enjoyed the "search for" challenges of books in the "Where's Waldo" and the Walter Wicks' "Eye Spy" series or Sleeping Bear Press's "I Spy with My Little Eye" books, then Spot the Difference is definitely the book for them. Essentially wordless, the book presents 41 pairs of illustrations colorfully created by Tak Bùi, a comic strip artist. On each page, two versions of the same illustration are presented either side by side or one above the other, and "readers" are then challenged to compare the two illustrations and to identify the differences between the two. When readers believe they have identified all of the differences, they can turn to the back of the book where "Puzzle Solutions" identify the differences "all from top to bottom, left to right."

      Bùi's cartoon-like illustrations are visually attractive, and they humourously present a wide variety of indoor and outdoor scenarios that are numbered and labeled. For example, # 9 is "Something Fishy," # 14 is "Trojan Rudolph" while # 29 is "Beach Bash."

      My sole criticism of the book is that Bùi really needed to have given young readers some indication of how many differences each pairing contained. For instance, he could have added text to say something like, "Find at least X many differences in # 8 'Active Airport.'" Checking the "Puzzle Solutions" section indicated that there were, in fact, 20 differences between Bùi's two portrayals of the same scene. I fear that younger children, not aware of how many differences there actually were, might have stopped their search well before they reached 20.

      Not likely an institutional purchase, Spot the Difference is a good gift or home purchase. Time spent during long car rides or being stuck indoors because of inclement weather will seem to pass more quickly by those questioningly engaged in Bùi's clever art.

Recommended.

Dave Jenkinson, CM's editor, lives in Winnipeg, MB.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364

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